The World Russia Forum 2012: How To Counter Media Bias Against Russia?

I was recently honored to be invited to the World Russia Forum 2012, an annual event organized by Edward Lozansky that aims to promote US-Russia cooperation. You can read Eugene Ivanov’s write-up on last year’s forum here. The theme for this year will be “the role of NGOs, Public Diplomacy, and Media in formulating the agenda for US – Russia cooperation.” Below is a list of round-table participants; some of the names will be familiar to blog readers and sundry Russia watchers.

Although I have my own ideas on how to influence the generally woeful Western media coverage of Russia for the better, I would still appreciate suggestions from readers. The forum is open so you may alternately show up in person to give your two cents.

Any strong solution will have to be a lot more general and systemic than a proposal to debunk or elucidate individual stories (DR and a few others have been going at it for years, with next to zero general effect).

Patrick Armstrong identified the crux of our predicament years ago in his excellent article More Questions Than Can Be Answered which I highly recommend. In short, it’s a fool’s game. An idiot’s limbo. Etc.

True enough. As Armstrong notes, there are a lot of assertions without any proof. Even the BBC article acknowledges that other than the claims of Kolesnikov, there is zero proof that Putin is directly connected to that property (he certainly doesn’t own it and never has). Even the fact that persons from the Federal Protection Service apparently stopped people coming there to take pictures isn’t proof that Putin, when President, was connected since that Service is supposed to be mandated with protecting several high-ranking officials (and not just the president and prime minister as Kolesnikov asserts) so it could have been any one of them other than Putin who may have been at the site at the time (and had Putin been there as president, then surely it would have been the Presidential Security Service guards that would have been present and not just FPS guards).

I guess one way to change the poor Western media coverage of Russia for the better would be to see how and why media coverage of China changed for the better over the years from 1950 to 2010. The coverage has almost done a 180. In 1950 they were the “ChiComs” and “Red China” and by 1951 they were fighting Americans in Korea. By 2001 it was just plain ol’ “China” and usually spoken or written of in fairly glowing terms. The problem I see there is that the Western media coverage of China seems to have followed events – so when Nixon visited China and China became a sort of semi-ally to the West against the USSR then media coverage was bound to improve. Throw in years of undeniable and unparalleled economic growth and American firms chomping at the bit to get into a billion-strong market and it seems fairly logical that Western media coverage of China is nothing like it was in 1950-1960. That set of circumstances is unlikely to be repeated in the case of Russia, except that Russia is likely to see better growth than the West for years to come (this might cause a reassessment in the media and coverage may improve somewhat).

All true, but problem is, Russia’s growth performance is beyond us to influence. Solutions have to be at a manageable scale.

I do have two project ideas that I think are pretty good. The first, and most important one, I’m postponing outlaying until I can unveil it at the forum.

The second idea is to create reputable institutes / NGO’s that will create alternative corruption, sovereign ratings, press freedoms, political freedoms, etc. indices. Alternative, i.e. from another perspective; and from perspectives there is cause to believe are more objective than the CPI or Freedom House.

One of the big problems right now is that to “prove” how rotten and brutal Russia is all one has to do is open up a browser and pull the relevant figure from TI, FH, RSF, etc. Journalists can then on good/accepted authority argue that Russia is as corrupt as Zimbabwe, as authoritarian as Bahrain, etc., despite the real life implausibility of such comparisons.

Having a good and comprehensive set of alternate indices, such as my proposed Corruption Realities Index, but from a proper NGO as opposed to a blog, will if not displace the likes of the CPI then at least provide ammunition for the other side.

PS. I wouldn’t say Western coverage of China is exactly “glowing.” It is highly critical in political terms (arguably, more deserved than in Russia’s case, as the PRC really does have imprisoned journalists and dissidents), and while half of economic coverage is upbeat the other is permanently bearish.

Nothing will stop them from ignoring these alternative indices. They will just fob them off as “Russian sponsored” or some other hypocritical BS. Treating some index from Freedom House as a scientific metric is simply absurd. These are transparently biased think tanks like the AEI with mostly neocon agendas. Why are there no rankings from any academic institution? What does Freedom House have in terms of research capacity that a any of the world class western Universities lack? Nothing and in fact the “researchers” working for Freedom House and AEI are nothing more than shills.

I have seen a debate on the here in Canada between a university prof and a Fraser Institute flunky about global warming. The flunky was spewing utter BS but he was a much better debater than the prof who ended up looking lost and confused. Maybe this is why the media reports on global warming as if there is no scientific consensus. Since they go to various shill think tanks for “balance”. This would fit in with them going to similar think tanks when it comes to politics, economics and foreign affairs. As a further example of this, the CBC’s David Halton presented some clown from the AEI as a member of an “influential” Washington think tank and thus worthy of attention. Halton never clarified that the AEI is a political action committee, aka propaganda outfit.

So the real problem is that the western media chooses to cite PACs as objective information sources. It does not do this randomly and I do not see them quoting various leftist/environmental PACs like they do neocon fronts. I would not treat the media as some objective entity that needs to only be fed some additional facts it will just ignore them.

Well the Sovereign Wikiratings Index would be another good alternate index as already we are seeing the established credit rating agencies starting to downgrade or threatening to downgrade western nations whereas the SWI already has them mostly below AAA status to start with. Showing that the “mainstream” credit rating agencies seem to be catching up to a truly transparent SWI credit rating might go someway to showing that alternatives based on truth and transparency are out there and should be cited if the media wants to stay ahead of the curve.

Western coverage of China can be highly critical, but it is definitely glowing compared to the coverage of Russia today and China in the 1950s. When was the last time you heard the western media referring to Jiang Zemin’s pleasure palaces? Or Hu Jintao’s secret fortune? Or to stolen elections in China and comparisons with Bahrain? The western media is definitely critical of China, but it seems to attempt to balance its criticism with news on how well China is doing. It does this to the point where the coverage (at least the coverage I see) tends to be skewed towards showing China in a far more positive light than Russia even though superficially Russia shares a lot more in common with the West when it comes to political institutions. The most frequent criticism I can think of when it comes to China are:

1. Faulty goods

2. Stolen technology

3. The Chinese supposedly manipulating the Yuan to give themselves a trade advantage.

Despite that kind of coverage I can’t remember the last time any politician or media analyst seriously called for China to be kicked out of global organizations such as the WTO (unlike in the case of Russia where there was talk about kicking Russia out of the G8 and keeping Russia out of the WTO).

I would start by referring to a major reassessment that was made by the Democratic Party in the US following the debacle of the 1988 Presidential election and which the Labour Party in the UK made following the debacle of the 1992 parliamentary election. Both parties grasped that one of the major reasons they were losing elections was because they were being weighed down by the barrage of negatives their opponents were constantly bombarding them with. This was a particular problem for Labour in Britain because of the disproportionate pro Conservative bias of the greater part of the British press.

The point that the Democrats and Labour both grasped is that however time consuming and exhausting it is, there has to be a swift rebuttal of every negative comment that is made. Moreover this rebuttal has to be immediately communicated to the source of the negative comment and every effort must be given to give the rebuttal as much publicity as the original negative comment.

I understand fully that to say this is to ask of a small group of people like the ones in your group something that on your resources is completely impossible. You obviously cannot take on the entire western media and much of western academia all by yourselves. The burden ultimately has to rest on Russia itself and the key institution that has to take responsibility for this is the Russian government. One audience your group might therefore want to address is the Russian government.

Specifically you might want to point out

1. That good public relations in the modern world do matter and that they matter particularly when addressing societies like the US;

2. That public relations require a far bigger commitment of time and resources than Russia has traditionally accorded them but if the necessary investment is made the results can be disproportionate;

3. That though there are numerous people in the US who are hostile to Russia the overwhelming majority of people in the US like everywhere else are unlikely to have very strong views and are therefore capable of being won over or at least of being brought round to a more sympathetic view;

4. That there is a core of people in the US who have a genuine interest in good relations with Russia and who might if given the necessary incentive form a strong lobby for it. These people are to be found in the business community and a particular effort should be made to reach out to them.

(NB: I can give what I hope might be two useful examples here.

(1) In 1980 Carter antagonised the US farming community when he imposed a grain embargo on the USSR following the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. This was one of his mistakes that cost him the Presidential election later that year. The strength of feeling amongst US farmers and the vocal way they expressed it eventually forced Reagan to lift the embargo. This was one case when domestic pressure forced a change of policy by the US in a direction that was favourable towards Russia. It is surely significant that it was achieved by a non political business lobby;
(2) After the Chinese government’s crackdown on the protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989 calls for a comprehensive US economic embargo on China were defeated because of strong resistance from the US business community, which was already starting to value its trade and commercial relations with China).

5. That the Russian government obviously cannot do all this by itself but needs to foster institutions and media outlets that will do most of the work for it. These could be institutes, foreign trade centres, civil relations NGOs etc. A key role should be given to the academic community. Russia does have some (but not many) good political scientists and commentators. More stress should be given to training more of them whilst arranging for them to go onto TV programmes and talk shows to put Russia’s case. Obviously good English is a prerequisite. I have to say that many Russian spokesman and commentators I hear and see come across to me as far too hesitant and poorly trained and far too anxious to please their interviewers or talk show adversaries by always conceding or appearing to agree with far too much of their opponents’ arguments. Russia really also needs to get together a good class of economic commentators. Those that I read and hear seem to me to do little more than echo western views (eg. that the country is simply an oil economy), which is not only inaccurate but which simply confirms the negative view westerners already have. Overall Russia is the only major country I can think of whose economists seem determined to talk its economy down.

6. That rebuttals must be clear, moderately worded and fact based. The latter is especially important. Anybody who has got into an argument knows that the person who invariably comes out best from an argument is the one with the better and more accurate facts.

7. Over and above all of this, and it is a point we have both touched on in comments both on your blog and elsewhere, Russia and its government need to project a positive image of the country. Russia does itself no favours when it appears to concede its critics’ claims that it is indeed steeped in corruption, that its courts are lawless, that its investment climate is terrible etc. On the contrary all it does is confirm the negative image of the country fostered by its critics. I do not mean that Russia should revert to the mindless optimism of Soviet propaganda, which was so farfetched that it was incredible. What Russia needs instead to do is to put the stress on the positive for example by saying that corruption is nothing like as bad as people say, that Russian courts by and large do their job and do it well and that foreign companies that invest in Russia nearly always make lots of money – all of which of course is true.

8. Russia also needs to go on to the attack on its various rankings, exposing the flaws in their methodology. This should not be difficult given how totally wrong most of them obviously are. How can the credit rating agencies justify giving Russia a junk bond credit rating given its strong macro economic positions and when unlike countries the credit rating agencies have previously given AAA ratings to Russia has not defaulted on its debt or sought IMF assistance and shows no sign of needing to? How can Freedom House claim that press freedom in Russia is on the level of Azerbaijan and Zimbabwe when that is obviously not the case as the diversity of opinion in the Russian press shows? How can MGU really be at the level of the University of Reading when the students of its law department have taken on and beaten those of the law department of Columbia University in a recent legal contest? Again Russia to some extent does this sort of thing but nothing like to the extent that it should and does not give its criticisms of these rankings anything like the publicity they deserve.

9. It is really incredible that Russia allows false or misleading information to be spread about Russian court cases. Bluntly it should not be up to you to publicise the ECHR judgment in the Khodorkovksy case. Russia should aggressively point out that the people on the Magnitsky list have human rights as well and that at this stage absolutely nothing against them has been proved. Russia should not hesitate to threaten or bring legal action against individual Senators and Congressmen and others who make inflammatory proposals for Magnitsky type lists using whatever opportunities to do this are provided by the US legal system and by the US courts. It should show no hesitation in threatening or bringing legal action when false and clearly defamatory allegations eg. about Putin’s ownership of exotic palaces or secret shareholdings in companies like Gunvor are made. Instructing a few good law firms in the US and Britain would again be a small investment that might pay massive dividends.

10. Lastly, Russia also needs to get itself sorted out at home. Many of the negative stories about Russia are sourced from Russian news media entities like Novaya Gazeta and Moscow Times. Nothing should be done to suppress or limit these media entities but when they publish obviously false news and commentary in Russia then this should immediately be challenged in Russia itself and not left to go unanswered as it too often is. Similarly there should be a challenge to the sort of false stories and negative commentary one too often gets on the Runet. It goes without saying that the government itself should speak clearly with a single voice. It is totally unacceptable that in the quest for inclusiveness critics of the government should be recruited onto public bodies like the Human Rights Council and the Public Chamber, which they then use as a platform to propagate their extreme anti government views and to spread absurd reports like the ones the Human Rights Council has provided on the Khodorkovsky and Magnitsky cases, which undermine Russia’s position not just internationally but in ongoing international court cases.

You asked for some suggestions. These were thoughts more than suggestions. I suppose my overall comment is that Russia needs to be a lot more self confident and aggressive about arguing its case. The fundamental difference between China and Russia is that China is even though as a Communist state it should have a more difficult case to make.

Sorry for the length and stream of consciousness quality of this comment.

“It should show no hesitation in threatening or bringing legal action when false and clearly defamatory allegations eg. about Putin’s ownership of exotic palaces or secret shareholdings in companies like Gunvor are made”

This should be relatively straightforward in the case of the British media. The libel laws in Britain are such that it is possible to see Russia’s government and/or individuals thereof easily succeeding in lawsuits against the likes of the BBC and the Economist. I know the UK governments wants to clamp down on “lawsuit tourism” (if it hasn’t already) but until that time a few good lawsuits might do wonders to set the media straight on actually checking facts before making wild claims.

Re-necessity of rebuttals. I think that’s the responsibility of persons like Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Not sure how much influence one can exert there.

I completely agree with you about the importance of PR and business links. The latter, in fact, as far as I can make out have been the subject of a lot of the earlier World Russia Forums. This time however it is dedicated more specifically to media coverage, NGO’s, etc.

Thanks very much for the other points that are helpful. Coming up with and most important PROPAGATING its own university rankings system is clearly very overdue.

As regards 10), this DOES happen in Russia, mostly through a “patriot blogosphere” (e.g. people like Politrash, or Nikolay Starikov, one of whose pieces I translated where he challenged a story spread on Echo of Moscow that millions of Russians were emigrating; to no-one’s surprise, foreign newswires / journalists of the Ioffe and Harding type picked up the initial claims but not the rebuttals). What we need is a way for the “other side” of Russian politics, media, and blogosphere (i.e. non-oppositioners) to be actually heard in the West.

HOW to make them heard is in fact what my main project idea is about. But if you don’t mind, I’ll forego posting details about it until I’ve had the chance to make a case for it at the Forum.

We can all agree that Russia’s PR sucks and the field is left to nincompoops like Miriam Elder or outright hostiles like Lucas. Russian spokesmen are too often boring, prickly, opaque and over formal.

I often suspect that Russia is simply too PROUD to go to the effort of doing PR, lobbying and all that distasteful stuff. After all, it’s 1000 years old, been a major world player for 250 years or so: perhaps Russians feel that they’re there and that’s all there is to it. Do the UK, USA, France, Germany etc maintain lobbyists to improve their images, they ask, so why should we?

I think that’s a mistake. Russia needs the goodwill of the rest of the world more than the ROW needs Russia’s. Now that Russia Inc has lots of money, it should learn from Georgia and Kosovo — money invested in PR companies and lobbyists in Washington can give a return many times the investment.

I can’t see that Russia will stoop to the lobbying tactics Saakashvili uses through Orion and Podesta if this article is an accurate guide: http://www.salon.com/2011/10/05/neoconservatives_hype_a_new_cold_war/
The downside is that Russia’s internal enemies and political opposition groups will mount anti-Putin lobbying efforts in Washington DC and Ottawa and the two sides will end up pouring vast amounts of money into spin and counter-spin.

What would be more in Russia’s interests and which would probably appeal to President Putin are Russian Centres of Science and Culture supported by Russian embassies, chambers of commerce and consulates throughout the US and Canada, or at least in major cities there, along the lines of such centres in Chennai (see link: http://ruscultchennai.in/), Mumbai and Phnom Penh (link: http://www.embrusscambodia.mid.ru/rcnk-e.html) but with an emphasis on Russian – North American co-operation, common interests and history, and cultural activities to interest the public such as film, arts and literary festivals, cooking classes, Russian language lessons and public talks on history, science, space exploration and politics. The centres could even offer scholarships to high school students and graduates to study science and Russian language at universities in North America or Russia.

Apart from my two cents’ worth, I offer my congratulations to you and Anatoly for being invited to the World Russia Forum.

I think you have touched on a very important point. Russian pride does get in the way of effective lobbying and good public relations. It’s as if Russians somehow feel it’s beneath them and that they are soiled by it when they do it. I don’t usually like to generalise but on this occasion I will and I would say that judging from the Russians I know it is something of a national characteristic. .

The simple fact is that good relations and effective lobbying are simply indispensable in the modern world. The Germans by the way know it and do it. One reason why German products have such a high reputation is because the Germans know how to market them.

One humble suggestion I may make at the start is to start pointing out all the areas where Russia and Israel are in fact cooperating. This will cause short circuits in the D.C. anti-Russia lobby where it overlaps with the pro-Israel lobby.

In particular, in the event Israel does go to war with Iran and uses Azeri bases the fact that Moscow turns a blind eye to the IAF’s overflight from its Gabala radar will be almost unavoidable, save for a lame cover story that this system designed to detect ICBMs in outer space was ‘blinded’ by a few F-16s. The Frank Gaffneys, Krauthammers who are so peachy keen on using military power but don’t understand its limitations will repeat the cover story but all the Pentagon brass at least will know the truth, that Russia and Israel cut a deal whereby Moscow denounces the bombing of Iran all the way to the bank as oil prices shoot up $40-$60 per barrel on the news. On the flip side, since you can’t win with hardcore Russophobes (even those who advocate military action against Iran out of sincerity or just to take out another Kremlin ‘ally’ as in Syria), they will suddenly say Iran was never any threat in the first place. They’ll say the Kremlin duped the West into attacking a competitor to Gazprom, Iran should be Europe’s biggest supplier of gas, and this just shows once again how cynical Russians are blah blah blah.

In the end, this tiny little thing won’t even come close to solving the enormity of the overall problem of lies, double standards, and general ‘at least we’re not Russia’ smugitude which is all too apparent from certain Twitter feeds (are the TSA-iskis groping babushkas at airports and on highways now?). And Russian leaders if they’re smart particularly the Skolkovo crowd won’t disclose more than the tip of the iceberg of Israeli-Russian technology transfers (particularly those with mil applications) just for short term political gains. The long term corollary of the Reset whereby D.C. turns a blind eye to Israeli tech sales to Moscow and sufficient overlap in personnel to the point that it’s hard to say where the Israeli tech ends and the Siberians’ begins is probably just too beneficial. I’ve even read that scientists in Tomsk have developed a device that can ‘sniff’ out explosives under heavy padding from a dozen meters away or more, thereby making most of the TSA gropers obsolete if this tech were deployed at every U.S. airport. But we can’t have that.

Agree with the commenters above that probably the best thing Russia could do would be to set up anti-corruption NGOs as well as government bodies that audit, find chinovnik offenders, accept anonymous tips, and put em’ on trial. These would be derided as show trials but it would divide the honest opposition that can incrementally make improvements from those who just want to create street theater for the benefit of foreign paymasters.

Congratulations, Anatoly; it’s quite an honour to be invited to such a prestigious gathering, and I hope you’ll go. See if you can’t get some serious dialogue going on Russia’s proposed new regulatory procedures for NGO’s – get it out front what the law is really proposing, why it’s necessary (real examples of “pro-democracy” NGO’s inveigling against the government) and how the new law will protect bona-fide NGO’s that help Russia transition to a progressive democracy.

Humour is missing. If Putin and his team could manage a little self-satire and plenty of tongue in cheek stuff (Putin in dinner jacket tied down to a table with a laser slowly inching its way to his crotch, breaks free and escapes. Tag line, ‘In Russia, we have a real Mr. Bond’. Follow up, Putin in a chair stroking a white cat with a diamond choker, challenged by Bond look-a-like, “No Mr. Bond, I expect you to feed kitty. You are after all the butler.” It targets iconic western cultural references and highlights Russia is just like any other country. Or maybe a few fake documentaries such as growing middle class russians with access to western tv feel moved by the plight of the poor westerners they see and want to adopt western children? Sometimes the only way to expose cliches is to exaggerate them to a ridiculous level and appeal to a common denominator, humour again.

On a side note, I’m a massive fan of Sergei Shoigu who was for twenty years boss of the Mchs.

Short tv spots on western Cold War attitudes/predjudices that endure: A lone border guard in driving snow lifts the border post marked ‘Frontier’ and a bus labeled ‘One-Way-Tourism’ goes past. Switch to holiday makers in summer clothes arriving at a modern airport. Tag line, ‘The Cold War has gone. Jackson-Vanik remains. A vintage too good to give up?/With friends like these…’

More round-panel televised debates with scholars covering things like environment, Science, co-operative projects with Europe, why is Russia’s trade with Europe (UK, De) v. large but minimal with the US and what benefits could a normal relationship be? There’s a lot going on.

I also have a question. I’ve watched quite a few documentaries on dutch tv that are pretty good on Russia and a few on german tv. It seems to me most of the anti-Russian vitriol is in the anglo-saxon sphere and less so continental Europe. Do you also have this impression? Would it not make more sense to be more friendly towards those who make competent tv programs, i.e. better access to facilities and ministers than to those who spend their time spreading poison? Aren’t we after all told that ‘Content is King’, which if is the case, save the content for the non-haters?

In spite of all of this, I have the impression that normal people don’t adhere to the extremes peddled in the media and probably care even less. They’ve got other things to worry about. The Russiaphobes are primarily preaching to themselves and the ignorant, no?

US media distorts all facts about Russia, it lies in quite unabasged way. I spend part of the year in Russia and part of the year in US. Russia is hands down a better place to live than US. It is cool, green, pleasant with great nature and culture vs a concrete hot jungle in US where you need to drive to a park to walk. Concerning education: US BS degree corresponds to a Russian High School and Russian 2-3 years undergraduate in Math corresponds to an American Ph.D. Most US University students would never graduate from a Russian High School. I am not even talking about Civil rights. With US history of 200 years of either slavery or segregation and Indian genocide, with not much else (oh, I must add the murder of MLK, Malcolm X, and just about everybody else who stood for civil rights), US is not in a position to criticize others, not even countries like Uganda or Rwanda.

Here is the wiktionary and people are trying to build up a dictionary of all major languages,
the Russian dictionary is very poor it would not require a big budget and could help a lot.http://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/girl